This time of year

Sorry, its been a while since we last posted. No excuses really- we've been around, not particularly busy- just not posting!

So its 25 days until Christmas... a time of the year that I have never particularly enjoyed to be honest.
I have found it stressful, expensive and overall way too commercial. Around October, shops and malls start their advertising, lulling you into their stores to buy crap that you, and your loved ones, probably don't need.

So how do we make this time of year a more focussed, less commercial and ultimately more enjoyable time?

Well, I'm not entirely sure. But I do have some ideas.

Christmas means lots of things to different people. For us, its the celebration of the birth of Christ. Not the most important celebration of the year, but important nevertheless.
For us, it shouldn't be about the presents, the tree, the food. Not saying those things aren't great- though we don't really do a tree. (does a Kauri count? probably. It'll be the first time in years we will have decorated something).
So here are my ideas:

Less presents. Less crap. If you're buying presents, think about what they are, where they come from and whether they will actually be used/loved/needed. Try making something? Many people we know do baking for christmas- which can be good especially if its freezable.
In our family, we have started drawing a name out of a hat which means we only buy/make for one couple. So you still get presents, just less- but probably more awesome/personalised ones.
On a side note, those packaged christmas cookies are terrible. Does anyone actually like them? Cookie time cookies are yum and palm oil free.

If you don't enjoy it, don't do it. If the thought of putting up a tree gives you the cold sweats, perhaps reconsider why you do it. If it's important to your family, then maybe do it as a family, or delegate it to someone who wants to do it.

Food. Christmas food can be whatever you want it to be. We are lucky in NZ having Christmas over summer so we are more comfortable with the idea of a BBQ on Christmas day. Don't feel pressured into doing the big roast if you really don't want to. My family did an eggs benedict brunch last year and plan to do it again this year. It helps that my sister in law is a great cook and did a fantastic job, but you can do whatever works.

What helps you stay grounded at Christmas? Do you disagree with anything we've said? Please share your thoughts/arguements etc!

"Wasteful kiwis still biffing costly fruit and veggies"

... is the title of THIS article posted on the Stuff.co.nz website this morning.

In a nutshell, we (kiwis) are still buying more than we need, cooking more than we need and throwing out the rest.

Food prices have increased, petrol prices have increased, general living costs have increased but we are still throwing away thousands of dollars of food a week.

I know for me personally, if something is on special it is very hard for me not to buy it- and in the past this meant that food has gone to waste- in the bins and in the compost. Since we have been doing meal plans (for dinners mainly) our food waste has been greatly reduced as we are only buying and consuming what we need.

So, how do we reduce the amount of food we waste?

Meal planning
If you know what you are going to eat, you wont buy unnecessary food items and therefore you hopefully wont waste them. Meal planning doesn't have to be set in stone- we often interchange what we have planned with another day, but we try to stick to a weekly plan as much as possibly.

Buy what you need
Don't go out and buy all of those cheap-as-chips specials and deals if you aren't going to consume them or use them (ie preserves, frozen meals etc) in time.

Eat or use your leftovers
So often, we don't really feel like eating the same as what we ate last night for the 2nd day in a row... If you know this will be the case, perhaps put some aside as a frozen meal (if possible) or give it away. Nanna popped over for a visit recently and we had lots of leftover casserole from the night before- she was very happy to take some home for her tea.

Store well
If you do decide to buy 20kg of potatoes because they were $1 at the local market, make sure you store them well where they wont go off fast. Same goes with any perishables. If you need to refrigerate something, make sure you remember its there! Many a time I have gone to the fridge and found something oozing at the bottom because I had completely forgotten about those <insert perishable>, even though I really wanted to eat them.

Do you have any more ideas for how you personally reduce the food wastage in your household? Please share them below- we'd love to hear from you!

Garden update

So it's week 3 of using coffee grounds to repel snails and so far, so good!
Part of me does wonder whether its also due to the fact that I have companion planted marigolds along side the veggies, along with a flower which we planted ages ago and can't remember what it is!

So these first couple of pictures were taken the day I first posted about trying a natural snail repellent here

L-R: Strawberries, forgotten-name flowers, brussel sprouts, spinach and a couple of herbs in there somewhere

L-R: herb pot (coriander & parsley), snow peas, thyme and marigolds

These photos I took a few minutes ago. Don't you just love the light on a spring morning?

One a little moth-eaten, but pretty good

So far so good here too. 

Sadly, the basil's a bit eaten, but otherwise ok. 

So, as long as one of us is having a morning coffee, I'm going to continue with the coffee grinds and see how we get on.

Now I need to work out how to prevent white moths... oh and the birds from eating the strawberries! Any suggestions/tips/comments will be greatly appreciated!

DIY Cleaning Products: Tips

One of the problems we have found with making out own cleaning products is that they tend to solidify over time (especially if the area they are stored in gets cold overnight). We are talking here about recipes that use soap of some kind (for us that means, dish washing liquid, hand wash, and laundry detergent). Commercial products contain ingredients to stop that happening but not when you make it yourself. Here are some tips to solve this problem:

• Make sure you use the right amount of liquid and soap when you make up the recipe 
• Always give the bottle a shake before using.
• If it gets really thick then pour the bottle into a mixing bowl, add a little boiling water at a time while mixing with an electric mixer on low or a whisk. When it looks like the right consistency pour it back into the bottle.
• Ecostore soap makes products of a better consistency than Sunlight Soap. 

Let us know if you have any other issues.

While I'm talking about this, I found yet another source of soap; Trade Aid. You can buy their soaps from Trade Aid stores or online and they only cost $3. As everything Trade Aid sells is fair trade so these are sustainably  produced (even the palm oil!) and the workers get a fair wage. More info here. I have not yet tried these soaps in a recipe but I don't see any reason they would be much different to the Ecostore soaps as they have similar ingredients.

Anybody found another good source of soap?

DIY Cleaning Products & Ecostore

Like the new blog design? I got distracted when I was meant to be writing this post!

If you are looking for an more environmentally friendly alternative to sunlight soap that doesn't cost $10 a bar then try  Ecostore bar soaps. I picked up one for about $1.80 from New World. They are a bit smaller than the average bar soap so to get the same amount as 1/2 a bar of sunlight soap (as required in this recipe) you will need almost a whole bar (60g out of a total of 80g to be exact, use scales is my advice).

Now, they do contain palm oil and I have given Ecostore a lot of flak in the past about their use of so called 'sustainable' palm oil. But recently Ecostore have been using a programme called GreenPalm. This is how their website describes the programme:

"Ecostore supports the production of sustainable palm oil through the GreenPalm programme. This means that for every tonne of palm oil/palm kernel oil we use in the production of ecostore products we have paid a voluntary premium to a palm oil producer which is operating within the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil’s (RSPO) strict guidelines for social and environmental responsibility." - http://www.ecostore.co.nz/about/palmoil.html

The way I understand it is that for every tonne of palm oil Ecostore buys, they send a premium directly to RSPO sustainable growers regardless as to whether Ecostore actually bought any palm oil from those growers. This is necessary because at the moment it is impossible to know which grower grew a particular shipment of palm oil or whether any of it is sustainable. This is because palm oil from different growers is mixed up when it is processed. The GreenPalm programme means that sustainable growers are rewarded despite the lack of traceability in the industry.

This is a major improvement from Ecostore's previous policy ('we're a member of RSPO so it's all ok') but it still relies on the RSPO definitions and policies on what 'sustainable' palm oil is (which are not ideal) and on their auditing system (which, from what I've read is practically non-existent). More on the RSPO here.

So as far as I see it, GreenPalm certified palm oil is a big improvement and I think it is good enough to be supported as a step in the right direction, but it should not stop there!

Natural snail repellent- phase 1

I'm a newbie to gardening- getting better, mind you, but still very new. We have a small veggie garden which seems to be chugging along ok but Ive just noticed that the snails seem to be back... Since I've just planted some snow pea seeds (now seedlings) I really want to beat the snails before they eat them all! Since we are trying to be less damaging to the environment and have a little one who loves the garden, we will be trying all sorts of things to rid our garden of these pests.

Week 1: coffee grinds

The coffee plunger is used every morning, so we tend to have coffee grinds every day. Some websites reckon its a great way to repel the snails, other websites dont think it works. So here we go!

I put the grounds around the seedlings this morning which are in a half barrel.

What other methods should we try?
Egg shells, sandpaper around the bases, diatomaceous earth, beer pools?

What has worked for you? What hasn't? Any suggestions would be great

Dirt is great!

The Good Stuff: Cookies!

This segment highlights the good things out there. Products that by design or chance are free of all the ingredients and practices that we keep banging on about. So enjoy!


I'm not sure if we have mentioned this before but pretty much all supermarket biscuits contain (or probably contain) palm oil. We don't eat a lot of biscuits but when we do we generally make out own. But when you want a biscuit in a hurry though what are your options?